The present invention relates generally to global positioning system (GPS) satellite signal acquisition and more specifically to a faster computation algorithm for GPS P(Y) code and multiple blocks C/A code satellite signal acquisition.
The nominal GPS operational constellation consists of 24 satellites that orbit the earth in 12 hours. The control segment consists of tracking stations located around the world. The GPS user segment consists of the GPS receivers and the user community. GPS provides specially coded satellite signals that can be processed in a GPS receiver, enabling the receiver to compute velocity, time and position.
The GPS satellites transmit two microwave carrier signals. FIG. 1 is a prior art drawing of GPS signals. The L1 frequency (1575.42 MHz) shown at 100 carries the navigation message. The L2 frequency represented at 105 (1227.60 MHz) is used to measure the ionospheric delay by precise positioning service equipped receivers. Three binary codes shift the L1 and/or L2 carrier phase.
The Coarse Acquisition Code (C/A) shown at 102 modulates the L1 carrier phase. The C/A code is a repeating 1 MHz Pseudo Random Noise (P-CODE) Code. This noise-like code modulates the L1 carrier signal, xe2x80x9cspreadingxe2x80x9d the spectrum over a 1 MHz bandwidth. The C/A code repeats every 1023 bits (one millisecond). There is a different C/A code P-CODE for each GPS satellite. GPS satellites are often identified by their P-CODE number, the unique identifier for each pseudo-random-noise code. The C/A code that modulates the L1 carrier is the basis for the civil standard positioning service (SPS).
The P-Code (Precise) shown at 104 modulates both the L1 and L2 carrier phases. The P-Code is a very long (seven days) 10 MHz P-CODE code. In the Anti-Spoofing (AS) mode of operation, the P-Code is encrypted into the Y-Code. The encrypted Y-Code requires a classified AS Module for each receiver channel and is for use only by authorized users with cryptographic keys. The P (Y)-Code is the basis for the precise positioning service (PPS).
The navigation message shown at 103 also modulates the L1-C/A code signal. The Navigation Message is a 50 Hz signal consisting of data points that describe the GPS satellite orbits, clock corrections, and other system parameters.
The C/A code and P(Y) code are code division multiple access (CDMA) systems where a pair of unique signals are assigned to each satellite in the GPS phase of the C/A code or the P(Y) code. The GPS receiver applies correlation to measure timing. The received signal is correlated with the locally generated replicas of the selected satellite""s signal. This process is called acquisition. The traditional GPS receiver acquires this phase by continuous sliding, multiplication, and addition. This process is time consuming and is not conducive to miniaturized receivers. The C/A code is used in civilian GPS receivers and the military GPS receivers use both C/A code and P(Y) code. In general, the military receiver acquires the C/A code and transfers this timing to P(Y) code for tracking. However, if the military GPS receiver is under a hostile environment and exposed to a strong jamming threat, the less vulnerable direct P(Y) acquisition becomes necessary. The present invention applies to both the C/A code and the P(Y) code to improve the acquisition speed.
The conventional P(Y) code acquisition uses a time domain correlation approach as shown in FIG. 2. For each satellite, this approach correlates 10 ms of received sampled data (500,000 data points), represented at 200 with 200 locally generated replica, represented at 201. These replica are represented by
r(m)=Pj(mxcex94t)exp(j2xcfx80xe2x96xa1kmxcex94t)xe2x80x83xe2x80x83(1) 
where xcex94t is sampling interval, Pj(mxcex94t) is the sampled P(Y) code of satellite j, m=0, 1, 2, . . . , 49,999 is a time index, and, fk is the center frequency of the locally generated replica. To acquire the P(Y) code of the received signal from a targeted satellite, 200 locally generated replica are correlated with 500,000 sampled points of the received signal. If any of these 200 correlation result is above the threshold which is pre-determined by the correlation noise floor statistics, the code and the carrier frequency acquisition is completed, as is represented at 202. If none of the results is above the threshold, another 500,000 sampled data points will be processed in the same manner, as represented at 203. This new 500,000 point data set, represented at 204, only shifts one data point from the previous one. This process continues until either a signal is found or the preselected search time is exhausted. For xc2x11 ms of search time, the average amount of mathematical operations is 200xc3x9750000 500000-point correlation, making the known approach a time consuming and energy consuming operation.
The present invention is an improved global positioning system satellite signal acquisition method. The method of the invention reduces the number of operations in the block correlation used in determining Doppler frequency and time of the received GPS C/A or P(Y) codes. Reducing the number of operations in block correlation increases acquisition speed making it conducive to commercial and military GPS receivers. Since the application of this invention to C/A code GPS receiver acquisition and to the P(Y) code GPS receiver acquisition is the same and P(Y) code is non-repetitive, for simplicity purposes, only the P(Y) code GPS receiver acquisition is described.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide GPS receiver acquisition software which processes GPS data for faster, more efficient computation.
It is another object of the invention to provide faster, more efficient data acquisition with time-domain based software.
These and other objects of the invention are described in the description, claims and accompanying drawings and are achieved by an efficient, data processing minimizing, GPS data acquisition software method comprising the steps of:
separating first N data points from a received GPS signal into first M subdivisions, a subdivision representing a preselected number of P(Y) data points from said received GPS signal;
dividing second N data points from said locally generated replica P(Y)-code into second M subdivisions, a subdivision representing a preselected number of P(Y) data points from said locally generated replica, said second M subdivisions corresponding with said first M subdivisions from said separating step;
correlating data from said first M subdivisions from said separating step with data from said second M subdivisions from said dividing step, said correlating including the steps of
multiplying received P(Y) code with locally generated replica P(Y) code and then performing a summing operation resulting in third M data points;
performing an M-point fast Fourier transform on said third M data points from said multiplying step;
comparing a product from said performing step with a preselected threshold value; and
repeating said correlating step until said preselected threshold from said considering step is satisfied.